Paint a road route
A stop route is a list of addresses. A road route is the streets themselves, so instead of picking stops you paint
roads. Municipalities work this way as a rule; a contractor that clears streets rather than car parks can too.
What you need
One setting under Settings → Business: the Road routes switch. It is on for a municipality unless you turn it off, and
off for a contractor unless you turn it on. With it on, New route shows a Route type choice: Stop route (addresses
driven in order, picked on the map or by hand) or Road route (painted over the road network). A municipality starts on
Road route, a contractor on Stop route; either can pick the other. With the switch off there is no choice and every new
route is a stop route.
Where the roads come from depends on a second setting, Which municipality, which appears beside the switch when your
country has a list:
- With a municipality picked, the builder loads that municipality's whole road network at once, and draws its border
on the map for orientation.
- Without one (a contractor in Denmark or the US, say), the builder loads the roads of the part of the map you are
looking at. It does this by itself when it opens, over your addresses or over the roads already on the route, again
when you pick up the brush with nothing loaded, and quietly every time the map settles somewhere new while a paint
tool is armed. Load roads in view beside the paint tools does the same on demand. Each load joins the previous ones,
so you can paint a district, move to the next and keep painting without losing anything. A view too wide to load, a
whole city say, is refused with The area in view is too large to load roads for. Zoom in and try again.
You do not need to sign in again after changing either setting: the next New route reads them as they are now. A route
keeps its type once created; there is no switching an existing stop route into a road route or back, and its Locations
tab always opens the builder that matches it.
If the roads cannot be fetched at all (the map data service is busy), the builder says so: The municipality's roads
could not be fetched right now. Please try again later. for a municipality, The roads in view could not be fetched right
now. Please try again later. otherwise. With a municipality the paint tools stay disabled until its network has loaded;
without one they are always available, and picking one up simply tries the load again. A load that was made within the
last few hours is served from a copy even when the service is down.
Paint the route
1. Open the route from Routes and go to Locations. For a road route the tab is headed Route and offers Create route,
later Edit route. Until then it says You don't have a road created on this route. Draw the road path first.
2. The Road route builder opens full screen. The left panel shows Length, Locations, Roads and Duration, and the
placeholder Paint over the municipality's roads to build the route (without a municipality: Load the roads in view
and paint over them to build the route).
3. Without a municipality, zoom to the district you want first: the hint reads Pick the brush and paint over roads to
add them to the route; the roads in view load as you go until roads are loaded, and a view wider than a district is
refused with the zoom-in message when you pick up the brush.
4. Press Paint roads on the map and drag across the streets; the hint reads Paint over roads to add them to the route.
A Brush size slider appears while a tool is armed. Press the tool again to put it down.
5. Erase roads works the same way in reverse: Paint over roads to remove them from the route.
6. Watch the breakdown under Roads: 1 lane, 2+ lanes and Walkway, each with the painted length; click a row to
highlight that type on the map. Walkway covers pedestrian streets, tracks, footpaths and cycle paths. A pavement
drawn as its own line beside a street, and a crossing, are not offered, so painting a street never picks them up.
The Road type filter hides types from the map and from the brush alike, so a route that never clears a path can
untick Walkway; Reset filters brings them back.
7. Undo steps back one stroke; Clear empties the whole selection.
8. Press Save route.
The painted route is not listed street by street; the route shows its Length, Duration, Roads and Locations instead. A
route that was traced point by point before you painted is cleared when you arm the brush, and a message tells you so.
Draw a road the map does not have
Some roads you clear are not on the map at all: a private road, a yard, a path. Draw them once and every road route in
your company can use them.
1. In the builder, press Draw a road that is missing from the map beside the paint tools. The hint reads Click along
the road to add points and double-click to finish. Backspace removes the last point, Esc cancels.
2. Click along the road. A click close to an existing road lands on it, so the new road joins the network where it
meets it. Double-click (or press Enter) on the last point.
3. The left panel asks for a Street name (optional) and a Road type (1 lane, 2+ lanes or Walkway), and notes that The
road is saved for your whole company, so every road route can use it. Press Save; The road is saved and added to the
route.
A drawn road is shown on the map like a small road, white with a grey edge, and behaves like any other road from then
on: the brush paints it, the eraser removes it, other routes can paint it and see it dashed when this route drives it,
and it can be searched under Streets.
To change one, press Edit roads you have drawn and click the road. Rename it, change its type or drag its points on the
map, then press Save (The road is updated.). Delete road removes it for the whole company; The road is deleted. Routes
that already drive it keep their copy of it.
After an import, Save the orange stretches as roads turns the stretches that lay on no road into drawn roads in one
step, so the next route that drives them can simply paint them.
Map legend, beside Road type at the bottom of the map, explains every line: the route's own roads, the roads you can
paint, other routes' roads, drawn roads, the imported file and the municipality border.
Import a route file
A municipality often has its rounds drawn already, in its own map system. Rather than painting them again, export a
round as a GeoJSON file and import it:
1. Open the builder as above and, with a municipality, wait for its roads to load.
2. Press Import road lines from a GeoJSON file beside the paint tools and pick the file.
3. The map moves to the file's area. Every line that follows a road is laid onto that road, so it carries the road's
name and type exactly as if you had painted it. A line that lies on no road (a yard, or a path the map does not
have) is kept as drawn. A message sums it up, for example 46 lines imported: 41.2 km laid onto the road network, 0.7
km kept as drawn.
4. Check the result, erase anything the route should not have, and press Save route.
To check the result, the builder keeps the file on the map as a thin black line for as long as it is open, drawn over
the painted roads. Where the black line runs along a painted road, the import found the road the file follows. Where it
runs alone, part of the file was left out, and where a painted road has no black line on it, the import chose a road the
file does not follow. Stretches that lie on no road and were kept as drawn are orange. Show the imported file in the
left panel hides and shows the black line; it is never saved with the route.
If lines landed on the wrong road or on none, move Match distance and press Retry import. The distance is how far a line
may lie from a road and still be laid onto it, from 2 to 40 m, 12 m to begin with. A smaller distance stops a line
jumping to a path running beside its street; a larger one lets a loosely drawn file find its road. Retrying replaces the
last import, including anything you erased from it since, so settle the distance before you start erasing.
The import adds to what is already painted, and one Undo takes the whole file back out. Neither the Road type filter nor
Avoid roads already on other routes holds an import back: a street two rounds share is imported into both, and you erase
it from the round that should not drive it. A route traced point by point is cleared first, as when you arm the brush.
Without a municipality the builder loads the roads of the file's area before laying the lines on them. A file spanning
more than a district is too wide to load in one go, and its lines are then kept as drawn, so import one round at a time.
The file must be GeoJSON holding lines (LineString or MultiLineString) in longitude and latitude (WGS 84). Points and
areas in the same file are skipped. Anything else is refused with one of these messages:
- The file is not a GeoJSON file.
- The file contains no road lines. Export the roads as lines (LineString or MultiLineString).
- The file's coordinates are not longitude and latitude. Export it in WGS 84 (EPSG:4326) and try again. Map systems
often save in a national grid instead (SWEREF 99 TM in Sweden, UTM in Denmark); choose WGS 84 when exporting.
- The file is too large to import. Split it into smaller files, one per route.
Addresses on a road route
A road route may still carry addresses, a depot or a school, by clicking their pins; they are listed under Locations and
ordered with Optimize route (up to 99). The same rule applies as on a stop route: an inactive address cannot be added
unless its Active from date is still in the future, and clicking its pin answers An inactive address cannot be added to
a route. Addresses already on the path stay, greyed with an Inactive tag, see build a route. When a zone is dispatched,
the road routes it covers go out with it, see what happens when you dispatch a zone.
See also
- What municipality mode changes
- Build a route
- What happens when you dispatch a zone